Usurpation and kingship — Edexcel GCSE English Literature 1ET0
Edexcel GCSE English Literature · 1ET0
Usurpation and kingship
Themes
What you need to know
How Shakespeare explores usurpation and rightful rule: Antonio's crime, Sebastian's plot and the comic rebellion that mirrors them across the text, and why it matters to the text's meaning.
Where it appears, the key quotations that show it, and different ways it can be interpreted.
Evidence from the beginning, middle and end of the text.
How to use the lesson's key quotations in an essay, with a short worked paragraph.
Key quotations: 'What cares these roarers for the name of king?', 'Thy false uncle', 'My strong imagination sees a crown / Dropping upon thy head', 'Thy case, dear friend, / Shall be my precedent', 'Draw thy sword: one stroke / Shall free thee from the tribute which thou payest', 'I am subject to a tyrant, a sorcerer', 'Monster, I will kill this man', 'his daughter and I will be king and queen', 'Thy dukedom I resign and do entreat / Thou pardon me my wrongs', 'require / My dukedom of thee'.
Context: the divine right of kings, and James I's view that kings are God's lieutenants, so that resisting a king means resisting God.
Structure: three plots against rulers (Antonio's past crime, Sebastian's attempt on Alonso and Caliban's rebellion) that mirror one another, and Prospero's return as Duke of Milan.
Edexcel's Shakespeare question has two parts: part (a) on the printed extract marks only language, form and structure (AO2), so context earns nothing there; part (b) on the play elsewhere, from memory, marks the argument and its references (AO1, 15 marks) and context (AO3, 5 marks), not language analysis. Say which part each worked paragraph and exam tip is for.
